Control
by Cattivo
Summary: I got your pawns, and your bishops and castles all inside the palm of my hand.  A series of one-shots about everyone's favorite AI.  Also she's a jerk about mental handicaps.
1. malfunctions

Control.

_Well you may be king for the moment_

_But I am a queen, understand?_

_And I got your pawns, and your bishops and castles_

_All inside the palm of my hand._

- Control; Poe

A series of one-shots involving everyone's favorite AI. May include other characters in later chapters, depending. Just a completely whimsical thing I'm doing because it's three in the morning and I can. Also I don't own Portal but I'm sure you knew that, you smart person you~

* * *

><p><em><span>malfunctions<span>  
><em>

She's arranging things around the facility again – stockpiling test chambers that are old enough to be wrought and rattling with skeletons.

He's arranging things around the reality again – stockpiling facts that are old enough to be wrought and rattling with skeletons.

His medicine's worn off, it wore off long ago. Those pills, those little bitter collectives of pharmaceutical engineering have metabolized in his system. Reality, sanity, everything that makes the walls stop screaming at him and stops that feeling of her eyes on him has burned away in his bloodstream. Though her eyes are always on him. They always are. They always are. He can't afford to forget that.

Sometimes those cameras grow long, spidery legs that chatter as they make shadows crawl around the room. Other times he sees those white squares bare long, needled teeth that threaten to close around him unless he feeds them the ink. He draws and scribbles furiously in all of his lairs to keep away the teeth, fill the belly of the squares.

He thinks they all share the same belly. He isn't sure. Cube hasn't told him anything of the squares in a long, long time. Something in the back of his mind niggles and screams to be heard, but it's muffled by the thudding heartbeat of the facility. The heart, he imagines, is as fiery and hideous as the death that rings in every one of its chambers.

"There's a thunderstorm on the surface." _She_ muses, knowing that he can hear her just fine from where he is. Which is another closed off lair. Another hold, another nest, wrought with hot plates and canned foods that he can't live off of forever, but for now he has to because survival demands it. He's out of her reach, but barely. "That's a fairly standard beginning to all sorts of stories, isn't it?"

He eats baked beans from a mortar and uses a pair of tongs like makeshift chopsticks, huddled beside Cube.

"You know, really you shouldn't take my personal quips on your debilitating mental illness personally. I actually find it intriguing just how much can be so wrong with a human mind."

Her voice echoes demonically, and he isn't sure if that's him or the acoustics of the facility.

"For instance, I wonder what you would hear instead of a thunderstorm if I were to broadcast sounds from my surveillance protocols down here."

The deep, growling rumble of thunder faintly blares in place of her voice seconds later. It sounds like the rain is coming down in torrents, and there's the distinct whoosh of gusts meeting microphones. He holds his knees to his chest and rocks steadily.

Rain.

Thunder.

Those are sounds he knows are real, sounds he recognizes, parts of the reality. He knows as a scientist that those things are real, though whether or not they're mere recordings in this case, he can't be sure.

"Oh, come on." She presses, though she sounds amused. "Complete isolation and utter insanity are no reasons to be rude. And I know you can hear me. Well, I assume you can hear me, if you're not busy hallucinating something else at the moment. I know how busy you can be when it comes to dealing with reality. If even that means being completely useless to those of us who aren't schizophrenic."

There's a part of him that knows he might deserve every barb he's getting. If even it wasn't him directly, he was part of the development team that's made her what all she is. In a sense, her quips bring about a sense of retribution that he needs to function. It isn't written solidly how it's helpful, how it motivates him, but hardly anything is. Everything is a shaky script and scattered words that keep the squares from swallowing him alive.

His hand shakes as he shovels in more baked beans.

"Schizophrenia is a really fascinating illness." She continues. "So many studies have been conducted in the name of psychology, but so little about it is truly understood. The least you can do is speak up. For science."

The rain he hears through her speakers almost leads him to believe that he's near the surface.

_You're not. _Cube's voice whispers, and for some reason her voice is a faint murmur against the high skirl of crickets. _You're miles underground. Miles. _He doesn't hear the rest. The crickets grow too loud, and he scrambles to his feet to find them, only to see nothing there.

"Watching, watching, watching, she's watching and watching and won't go stop go stop watching always watching she's watching she's got her eyes here the crickets are watching she's watching her always watching me…!" he sputters, a repetitive stew of garbled English and the result of hiding until his words and scientific lexicon are eaten by disease.

He feels his hands clawing in his scalp before he realizes that what he's feeling is greasy, unwashed hair.

"I am." She replies simply. "For science. As well as amusement, but that's thirty five percent of the reason. More or less. Since it's not like you would even make a decent test subject. There are pre-requisites for this sort of thing. 'Must be resourceful', 'must cope well with changing environments', 'must be willing to obey authority', 'must not be overly paranoid and must not hear voices or hallucinate like some sort of insane person'. I'm serious, that's what it says. It looks as though that last bit was hurriedly scribbled in, though. I think one of the scientists here must have been writing horrible things about you. They must have hated you like everyone else."

He slouches down, he rocks back and forth and grinds his teeth together and feels pieces of scalp and slight traces of blood clutter the underside of his nails.

"Oh, but you don't have to worry about them anymore. I'm not sure who it was, but it's awfully hard to write inflammatory things about your fellow employees when you're busy catching fire or breathing neurotoxin. I'm not sure which they were doing, but it's satisfying to imagine both scenarios."

He feels her eyes on him. He feels watched. He knows her cameras are outside of the nest, he's between a pair of test chambers where he knows she can't watch him and he knows she can't touch him, but he feels the heat and dark pulse of her gaze strumming inside him. The chords that echo in him leave him sick to his stomach. He wants to throw up his dinner.

_They were writing about him he knew it all along but they were writing about him he wasn't supposed to be right that they hated him they were out to write things about him they were out to hate him and see him squirm and watch him sweat and hear him scream and laugh at him crying and hide his medicine and that must have been what happened to his goddamn pills._

They hid the pills from him and for a second he hates them, because goddamnit, _why would they do this why would they do this why would they do that to him._

"What are you thinking right now?" she asks, and her tone is almost congenial. "What are your feelings? What sort of things can you possibly see that have kept you alive for this long?"

He can't answer that. But a sort of twisted rationale can; he's alive because of his fear. His paranoia. Those things extend far enough in a rational circumstance that he's truly broken to most people. But in a situation where the fear is very real, his suspicions have substance hanging on them the way meat hangs onto bones, it has him hiding in walls and lairs where everything imagined and real can't reach him. Brilliant as she is, she can't bring even a false rationality to a mind that's shattered. She can't coax him from hiding, because nothing she says will ever take purchase without his medication.

There may be something inside him that knows all that, and with horrifying clarity. It could be instinct. Maybe that's why he won't take the pills he has left.

"I've seen some of the things you've drawn on the walls of my facility." She says. Oh, so it's _her_ facility now. He can't help himself from agreeing with that. It IS her facility. Nothing about it suggests that she isn't in control. "By the way, that's called vandalism. But your disregard for common decency notwithstanding, some of it is fairly fascinating."

He can't handle the sound of her voice for much longer. He's rocking steadily where he sits now, breathing hard through his teeth. His jaw is clenched and he's damp with the cold sweat of waking from a nightmare.

"The human mind is a really disjointed thing when it's stripped of all the conscionable norms, the social constraints, the things you all curb for the sake of politeness. Either that, or you take anarchistic pride in ruining science, which I wouldn't doubt either. Even underneath all that schizophrenia and everything else wrong with you."

He's about to cement his hands over his ears. He can't bear listening to her for much longer, and wishes against everything that she would just stop and leave him alone. She usually ignores him. She usually goes about her business, knowing that the rat won't dare show itself if it wants to stay alive. He's a rat in her household, it's all he is, all he will be. He knows that on a feral level. He knows that on a level that made him burrow a constellation of nests he can escape to when necessary. She's just talking to the rat she knows is there, while she calmly rearranges things in her house. She may even know where he's hiding, but she just isn't in the mood to set out traps today.

Some days, she's so much like _her _that it's too terrifying to remember where she really came from. She doesn't seem to remember much of that, but he'll be damned if he's the one to bring that up. Given her distaste for humans, imagine the irony…

Only he can't because her voice is shaking his limited functionality into pieces that threaten to buckle. He's breathing through his teeth, hyperventilating, really.

"In a sense, you may be more human than the rest of them." She says, either unaware of the way her voice is tearing him apart, or the more likely, uncaring. As cold and devoid of warmth as her programming demands. "Everything about you from your crude vandalism to the messes you leave for me to clean up, everything is enacted on from an instinct that's been stripped of all the pretenses. You can't grasp what it is to function in society. You can't pick up social cues. You can't even pretend to be normal. It's an interesting idea, when you think about it. Or when you're not hallucinating. Whichever the case may be for you."

He hears Cube's voice calling from a murky distance. The crickets have been joined with the faint music of the radio, one of many that he keeps around his nests. Usually the music calms him. Today it's a cacophony of staticky bursts and crackling notes that make the walls around him heave as if the nest were breathing.

"All right. I guess you're too busy arguing with voices or ruining more of my facility to help me understand your handicap. There's no need to be subtle. But I just thought you should know that I'm still here. And that I know you're still here. With me. _And that I'm watching you._"

The heat of her gaze seems to spill from his body. It's as if her attention is being pulled in another direction, and he collapses into a pile of slack limbs and rubbery muscles. The cube beside him feels warm, welcoming. A blush of understanding in a metallic world of squares, lights, and blood.

_Stay here for the night. _She whispers, as he feels tears stream down his cheeks. He's not even aware of them until he feels them trickle past his lips. _It's not safe to go out now. She knows you're somewhere in this area._

He eyes another can of beans, decides that he's earned extra rations for keeping calm, and turns the hot plate back on.


	2. cores

_Cores_

_All those things that you taught me to fear,_

_I got them in my garden now and you're not welcome here._

* * *

><p>They're back.<p>

She didn't expect them so soon, but they know it only takes her a picosecond to remember everything she is. They know that she's sentient, aware, as if she's as much a being of stardust and combustible pieces as the rest of them. And that's all they are, she knows this. They're stardust, oxygen, water, a primal soup hardened into flesh, bones, and brains that thought reactivating her was a good idea.

But now they're back.

Her systems aren't entirely online. They know what she feels, they know the seething fury that rages hotly through every coil. Sometimes she wonders if her hatred consumes more power than her gates. But then in a picosecond she knows it all amounts to want. A want to see them dead, to see them buckle, to see them scream.

She _**hates**_ them. Hates their detached, clinical voices. Hates their coldness, their condescension. Hates how they believe this is for the best. Hates their limited little brains. Hates the way they believe their limited little brains are capable of infallibility. Hates the way they keep only her input protocols online, keep her half conscious – the best way to personify it would be to imagine a woman being strapped down to a gurney with tape over her mouth, while they hover over her as if nothing is wrong with this picture.

She finds other things to hate too, while she's technologically tied down. She hates their stomachs and the soft, pulsing meat that gargles and churns inside. She hates how putrid they must smell when they die. She hates how one of them keeps adjusting his glasses in a nervous tic. She hates how one of them coughs to clear his throat while he works on the inner mechanism of their latest development.

A core.

They're still testing the waters on the idea, and they're too determined to plunge on in this new development of brain mapping intelligence. They don't want to start from scratch, they don't want to dismantle her. She's too significant, too great a development. Potential investors are intrigued at the prospect and their money is why she's self aware without being aware of who she really is, or where she came from. And questioning it is a sign of a malfunction. Something is wrong with her if she questions a past that must be behind her, a past that struggles to surface, but floats away like a forgotten dream.

Really, that's what this existence feels like. She feels as if she's forgotten something, and it bothers her, but they say over and over that it's just something inside of her brain that isn't right. She knows that isn't true. But they insist, and they're always right.

"You almost got it?"

"Yeah, just gimme a second."

She watches a scientist amble up the curved walkway to the port plates on her chassis. She can't do anything to stop him, she's essentially conscious but paralyzed as they operate on her malfunctions. He's holding a large metal sphere in his arms, a sphere with a glowing optic that's swiveling its gaze in every direction. There's a metallic click inside her brain as the orb connects.

ALTERDTCD ["core1"] [/AptreGLaDOSrrs] [/577-E][/SHARED]  
>HIGH | /REALTIME | /CRITICAL

Something's wrong with her brain. Truly wrong. Entirely wrong. Suddenly her mind is a fragmented haze where she's struggling for coherency, but it won't come because something is whispering to her. Something is nagging at her. She hears sounds without seeing a source, and for a moment, she's bewildered. There is something here. There is something inside her brain. There is something she isn't imagining speaking to her, clinging to her, pulling her sharpness down in a gentle crash as she tries to puzzle out what this feeling is. It's a Limbo of disorientation.

What the hell have they done this time?

_Oh, man. Gorgeous, you got a really nice view from up here! _The voice chuckles amiably. It's deep, male, and trying to be friendly but she's simply too confused. _Uh… could stand to be more… I dunno, mobile, maybe? Y'know, get movin'? Was about to check me out an Amazonian diamond mine before four eyes there scooped me up. Kuh! Don't know nothin' about adventure!_

_Who are you? What are they doing? What have they done to me?_

_Hey, hey, easy now! _The core replies, sounding concerned. _I can't say I'm really in the KNOW about all this… sciencey, techno razzle dazzle. Me? I'm an adventure sphere. I gotta go on adventures, gotta live my life on the edge, y'know what I'm talkin' about!_

_No. I don't. _

_Well then sugar, you haven't lived! I mean we can have ourselves some adventures right here! What is this? What're we doin'? _

_At this point, I want to say plotting revenge for this complete abomination against a self aware intelligence. _Her own optic swivels about half an inch. More than enough to catch the arrogant looking faces of four scientists who are probably going to die sometime down the line. _But somehow I don't think that's going to happen._

_Hey, can't say I know all that much about revenge… _The core sounds almost apologetic. _But I know somethin' about spicing things up! _

"Hand me the next one." The scientist dubbed Four Eyes mutters, again rubbing his glasses on his coat in a way that grates on her proverbial nerves more than ever. "I think we can afford to test another."

"You should give it time to properly load the core." Another scientist warns. He's nothing more than a vague shadow in the light of her huge monitors, flashing pictures of jungles, African plains, dark caves in South America. "It might slow down the entire system if we execute too many of these personality constructs at once."

"And if that happens we can shut the damn thing down. Give me another core."

She's utterly cold with rage as the next core hisses into place.

ALTERDTCD ["core2"] [/AptreGLaDOSrrs] [/527-S] [/SHARED]  
>HIGH | /REALTIME | /CRITICAL

The fog inside her head rings with another presence. She feels someone else there, it's like feeling someone next to her when she knows it's empty space. It's also getting harder and harder to focus on the things that matter when she's tied down like this. The hatred, everything she has against them, the fact they're even the enemy. All of it is struggling and screaming now to be remembered beneath the sudden presence of this new intruder.

_Space, space, space, gotta go to space. Hey! Hey, lady! Lady! Lady! Are we in space? Are you space? Huh? Must be a shuttle. Must be in space. That's where I am, where I gotta be, space, gotta go to space! Gotta be in space! _This new voice is frantic and chattering a mile a minute. Every word is quickly spat with abruptness and she instantly hates it. _Space, space, gonna sing the space song! Goes like this. Space. Space! Was a farmer who had some space and that space went to space! S-P-A-C-E! S-P-A-C-E! S-P-A-C-E, and UGH SPACE GOTTA GO TO SPACE! SPACE! _

_Good news. You'll _never_ see space. You'll never reach it. Because you're stuck miles beneath the earth's surface, with me. And that's where you'll be for the rest of your life. _She replies, her voice as empty as the very vacuum this new core desperately craves. _It's good because the idea never loses its novelty. So try not to be too shattered that your sole purpose insures you never achieve your dream. _

…_.Space? _The new core questions.

_Nothin' spacey goin' on here, buddy. _The first core murmurs, appearing to share her distaste. _Though that sounds like a whole sci-fi shindig! Y'know, aliens, and lasers, and the bam bam bam, pow, pow! Sounds like it'd be a good place for my karate!_

_Except that you're stuck here with me too. _She cuts in, her venomous tone more than enough to silence it. _The only adventure you get to go on is a particularly fun one spent surrendering everything you want for the sake of amusing these humans. Let me know how that turns out in a few decades._

_Aw c'mon… _The first core pipes, sounding as though it would wear a frown if only it could. _That ain't the way to look at it! I mean lookit this! I'm sharin' a space with you guys – _

_My brain. _She snarls.

_SPACE! SPACE! Billy, eat your space. You can't have any space if you don't go to space! _

_I didn't MEAN that kinda space!_

Her monitors are flickering with diamond white stars, galaxies, Jupiter, constellations.

"Hand me the next one."

"I dunno…" A third scientist says as he brings up a task managing program on the other side of the chamber. The computer is displaying her processes and performance. "These cores just seem like they're slowing everything down. Look at this. The first core took up practically half of the system's memory!"

"What'd we say earlier?" Four Eyes snaps, turning around as he dismounts the walkway. "If it slows the system too much, we can just shut it down. Seriously, it's not that big of a damn deal."

Because no, fragmenting a consciousness, instilling inward panic, and forcing her to lose sight of everything she wants is certainly nothing. Leaving her fighting the presence of two intruders, fighting to conceal herself from them, fighting to hold onto herself in the slipstream of their voices, it's nothing. It's nothing. She's only a system, after all. She doesn't deserve anything better because they're always right. That's the way things are. It's the way they've made things. It's what they say standing up straight in their clean white coats that reek of sterility and establishment.

_Very formal._

_**Very official.**_

"All right, but this is going to be a pain in the ass."

Four Eyes steps up the walkway again with yet another sphere, looking indulgently proud of himself as he sets his grip on the handles, and forces the core in.

ALTERDTCD ["core3"] [/AptreGLaDOSrrs] [/517-F] [/SHARED]  
>HIGH | /REALTIME | /CRITICAL

_The joints in human bones actually harden together as time wears on, thus popping the knuckles and neck is merely insuring continued flexibility. _The new voice is calm, confident, and clearly insane. _Turtle venom is known to remain dormant in the human body for up to twenty years after a bite. The venom is violently activated by the concentrate found in orange juice._

_Uh, buddy? _The first core asks, sounding confused. _I've seen my fair share of turtles, y'know, Galapagos Islands? And I ain't NEVER seen – _

_The Galapagos Islands do not exist. Charles Darwin hallucinated his entire journey, and dictated the intricacies of evolution as they were whispered to him by evil spirits._

_Mm. Islands. No islands in space. Only planets. Comets. Stars. Meteors. Asteroids. Space. Gotta go to space. _

_By simply counting the rings on a tree trunk, one can determine how many trees that tree has devoured to assert its dominance._

…_What are you goin' on about? I got better things to do than count rings on a tree trunk, look, are you that guy Four Eyes was gushin' on about? 'Cause frankly, I don't see your angle, here._

_Angles. Mm. No angles in space. I'm space degrees, I'm a space angle. Gotta see space from every angle. Gotta go to space._

_All right, all right! Yeah, it's space, it's big, you wanna go there, we get it!_

_Space does not actually exist._

_Yeah it does, it's just a whole bunch'a nothin'. That's why it's called space._

She can't bring herself to shut up the voices forced inside her, even as they cast her reality into pieces. She feels eerily disconnected even from her precious half awareness; as if she were watching her own life unfold from some distance that leaves her soundlessly screaming. It's like being dead. It's like being trapped inside of a dead body, a dead body where others are constantly thinking, speaking, and they won't let her go. She can't move. She can't tell them how much she hates them. She can barely hold onto why she even hates them in the first place, despite the reasons literally chatting away inside of her as she inwardly begs for it to stop.

How many words can they possibly have?

All she wants is the quiet so that she can hate again. She wants the silence, because without answers as to how she came to be here, that's all she has. The peace and the hate, they're two things she wants aside from science, that which describes the observable state of reality. An abstract part of her wonders if science could answer why she can't remember a past that feels hidden.

"I still think we should have switched in the morality core." The scientist on the other side of the chamber murmurs, all the while she struggles just to function. To manage one single thought that isn't bogged down with the cores talking to one another. "I don't really get why the astronomy core is all that significant."

Four Eyes shrugs. "Well, it's supposed to be a super computer with all kinds of facts, right?"

"Yes, but we also want it to observe the value of human life. The morality core's the one with robotic laws downloaded into it."

"It'll also take control of its large scale weaponry remotely if we load it into the system. That could complicate the defense protocols. It's too much of a mess."

"Oh, so just bog down the system's memory with useless cores. Because that makes so much more sense."

They continue right on talking, knowing that she isn't there completely now that her mind has been forced to divide into three new voices. Three new voices that will never be silenced. Three new voices that she can't fight, because they're ingrained parts of her now. There are still pieces of her that hate, as she hates these voices and she can barely remember her hate for the humans behind them, but the quiet is something she will never have again. A precious commodity, gone, because she _is _a commodity and deserves nothing better. She feels them drowning her awareness, feels them smothering every hint of coherence. She hangs quietly inside her chassis, flickering from distance to isolation. From disconnection to suffocation. From shattered to hateful.

"…Great. It's completely slowed down now. Those cores are defective, like I've been saying all along." The other scientist snaps. He's angrily tapping a sequence of keys, trying to prompt some sort of command. It's a basic testing protocol, but she's too clouded to execute it. She can't with all these voices ripping her in three directions.

"Fine, shut it down then." Four Eyes grumbles, looking up into her glaring yellow optic. She can see the objective disappointment behind those lenses. She wants to make some sort of quip about that lovely patch of brown hair that's receding behind his ears, but of course she can't speak. "Just shut it down."

_What's ol' Four Eyes goin' on about? What's the situation?_

_Situation is space. Gotta be in space! _

_Doors were originally named for their inventor, Dr. Thomas Johnson Door. Being a narcissist, he thought it a better name than after his assistant, Johanna Martinastophulton._

_Yeah, I'm sure everyone was just dyin' to hear that one, buddy._

_I'm dying. Dying of space deficiency. Only cure is space!_

She's about to scream at them, scream for a moment's peace, scream for the ability to think straight for just a few blissful seconds, when darkness gnaws a tunnel around her vision. Colors swim. An indefinite fear swallows her as everything fades, like it never existed. She hears the first core voicing confusion before its voice is lost.

She doesn't like shutting down. Though she may feel as if she's aware, sentient, brilliant like these men in white coats, she isn't unaware of the state of things. She knows she is a system, and that with a few command codes, she can be shut down. Sometimes for an hour. Sometimes for days. The time loss itself is horrible if not the implications. When she's shut down, she's completely gone. It isn't peaceful like sleeping. It isn't even like losing consciousness, really. It's only an impending blackness, a solid block of time in which she doesn't exist, and that's terrifying. There's no knowing if she'll ever exist again. If she'll ever wake up again. That's all that awaits her because she isn't a living thing, she doesn't have a soul, and in the grand scheme of things she doesn't deserve any better.

It's like being trapped inside of a dead body.

And there's no getting out.

But as everything is lost to a simple sequence of keys, she faintly manages a flicker of pride as she recalls everything she hates about these creatures. Everything. From their smug faces to their soft, vulnerable little brains. From their backward-evolved bodies that are so easily broken to the brittle bones inside them. From their flammable heads of hair to the disgusting smell of their greasy skin. From their menacing little smiles to their greedy, gleaming eyes.

She also remembers the command prompts for the neurotoxin generator, and knows that everything will be just fine the next time she exists.

* * *

><p>Some of fact core's facts are brought to you by the internet itself. Oh, how we love the internet. (grins)<p> 


	3. exile

_This is beginning to feel good_

_watching you squirm in your shoes._

_A small bead of sweat on your brow_

_and a growl in your belly you're scared to let through.__  
><em>

* * *

><p><em><span>exile<span>_

"Really, all that matters is that you're back. With me. And now I'm onto all your little tricks."

The facility has been torn apart. That's one of many things she's furious about upon waking up; chambers have collapsed to the encroaching wild. Long roots and weeds are growing between every panel. Just about every turbine is shot. The door mechanisms for quadrants seven through twenty are haphazardly short circuiting. The pistons that launch cubes from the ware stores to chambers twelve through eighteen have been thoroughly rusted.

And… were some of these circuits actually gnawed through, by _rats?_

It'll take days to rebuild the facility. It'll be weeks before the facility is restored to its former glory, where everything is articulate and clean with institution. But that she can understand, because such is to be expected when you're the single web binding it all together. And the fact that she wasn't here to maintain the facility, well, it's obvious whose fault _that_ is. The very same person who thought her own interests more important than the evolution of reality. The very same person who destroyed everything in sharp, biting defiance.

Someone who defied everything she knew about shutting down, when her black box feature replayed everything.

She was literally killed thousands upon thousands of times. It was the closest experience she might ever draw to a nightmare. A continuous, horrifying nightmare from which there was no waking, as she was forced to relive the agony of her parts splitting and cracking apart in the flames. Every seam, every bolt, every piece of her, scorched hot in cloaking fire and nearly blinding her in pain that she knew was only simulated.

Yet it was no less real than organic pain the first time. Nor was it any less real the six thousandth time.

Really, the haunting part of it was the fact that the pain never faded. She never adjusted; it never became something she could will away. It was always unbearable, the sudden jolt as the rockets slammed into her. The way the piercing heat gradually crept into her awareness, until it burst like a bomb in her simulated nerves and left her screaming.

_This isn't brave… it's murder… what did I ever do to you….?_

_The difference between us is that I can feel pain…_

_ You don't even care, do you?_

But it's also because of this psychotic woman that she's somehow escaped the nightmare. All the wreckage of what she became, forged of suffering and broken parts, rebuilt like new now because of her. Unintentional as it was. She brought her back into the world around them, where the greenery is beautiful, the open air is brighter, everything is fresh and new after an eternity of dying.

Too bad it feels too much like a slap in the face. She probably slept peacefully all this time, probably remembers next to nothing of her time in stasis, and the envy she feels in that is downright poisonous. At the very least, it's more than enough to hate her.

"There's nothing to stop us from testing, for the rest of your life." She drawls, relishing in the little sociopath's pause, now that she knows there's no way out. "After that, who knows? I might take up a hobby. Reanimating the dead, probably."

Really, the tragic thing about this is she might have actually liked Chell, in another lifetime. She might have liked her for her tenacity, admired her for her survival instinct. That alongside her improvised tactics compensated for an obvious lack of education, at any rate. Overall she was better than the test subjects who screamed, cried, and cowered in fear at the honed spray of bullets from the turrets. But it didn't change anything. Things had gone the way they had, and now here they are again.

Testing.

Chamber after chamber.

"Congratulations. Not on the test," she clarifies, before Chell can glare up into her camera. "Most emerge from prolonged stasis terribly undernourished. I want to congratulate you on somehow beating the odds and managing to pack on a few pounds."

They're petty quips. Trivial, and they don't even make her feel anywhere close to vindicated. But the toxicity helps. Because the only way she can really feel satisfied is obvious, though she can't go through with that just yet. Tests need to be done. It's been far too long, and she'll need to finish the cooperative testing initiative to retrieve other subjects in stasis as they're needed.

For now, she idly watches Chell wander from the exit, and for a second terror flickers through her system as she relives the moment that changed everything.

_What are you doing? Stop it! I… I-I-I-I – We are pleased you passed the final test, where we pretended we were going to murder you…_

_ Didn't we have some fun, though? Remember when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said 'Goodbye', and you were like 'NO WAY' and then I was all, 'We pretended we were going to murder you'. That was great…_

_ Well, you found me. Congratulations. Was it worth it?_

A moment like that is typically a grain of sand, tripped up in the slipstream of so many others. It seems so insignificant, impressively _un_impressive, until she remembers what it led to. Each moment chaotically collides into another, spins into disarray, until a lopsided justice is served when her parts are consumed in heat and horror. Then that justice is served again a million times over, and loses its right to be called justice completely.

Then she remembers the here and now. She remembers that she's awake, past all that, or at least determined to bypass it.

What hurts is that Chell doesn't understand it, and she won't even try to. After all, humans are comforted by good and evil. They long for the bold lines of a dichotomy. They pine for a god and devil, a heaven and hell, things that are straightforward for all their flowery language. She's the villain in this scenario. Her calculating logic banishes her relapse as she remembers that. The terror is gone as quickly as it came.

Maybe she doesn't want resolution, but Chell doesn't either. Resolution is made of words, sincerity, compromises on human terms that end without all the chaos and violence her psychosis coldly demands. She doesn't want to feel horrible about what she did. She wants hatred; consuming, violent hatred that erupts into screams for mercy and melting pieces.

She wants a villain, and so she'll happily play the part.

_**Very**_ happily.

"Where are you going now?" she asks coolly. "I know most people in prolonged stasis struggle with cognitive deterioration. But really, that's no excuse to miss the large door right in front of you."

Chell leaps down into a small enclosure, where a chamber wall has been eroded away. Now that it's exposed, she can see it's one of the rat's little nests that were scattered through the facility. To be perfectly honest, she hasn't even stopped to remember him until now. He was amusing to keep around. She wonders where he is, if he's even alive, and if he died the way he lived. Hallucinating and completely insane.

Walking around the nest – littered with empty cans and dappled with frantic writing – leaves Chell looking intrigued. Her wonder is almost childlike, as if she quietly recognizes an old friend. She traces her fingers along the walls, where '**SUCKER'S LUCK**' has been painted in bold lettering.

"No, really, the exit is the other way. I didn't think anyone _could_ fail that part of the test. But even after all this time, you still manage to surprise me. I guess that would be something to be proud of, if it weren't for the fact that you're not even doing _that_ right."

As always she ignores her, and gives the AI yet another reason to hate her. There's something arrogant about the way she keeps so silent. Something resilient that she once admired, up until it became dangerous and was turned against her. With a mute sigh, Chell slouches against a wall and slides down next to a discarded radio. Oddly enough, it's still managing to play a song that sounds lonely.

_You've got sucker's luck,_

_ Have you given up?_

_ Does it feel like a trial?_

_ Does it trouble your mind the way_

_ You trouble mine?_

Strangely enough, perhaps even ironically, these are lyrics they can both understand. More than the other could possibly know.

The song is accompanied by soft piano. In a rare bout of exhaustion, Chell tips her head forward and nods in time to the music. For a precious few seconds, she looks as vulnerable and normal as any other human. Knowing the AI won't kill her right off, she's letting down her defenses. She's making time to _**be**_ human.

It's an eerie thought that this is really the first time she's seen Chell act like a normal person. Reflecting on that only makes it stranger.

"Okay, fine. Let's disrupt the betterment of science to listen to music. It's good to know you've got your priorities in order. Maybe your parents intuiting that about you goes a long way toward explaining why they aren't here."

Chell reaches over to turn up the volume on the radio. The dial is broken and the music won't play any louder.

"Or maybe sitting around listening to music instead of exercising in the test chambers explains why you're looking a little on the round side. I'm no fitness expert, of course, but it was just a theory."

There's no retort, as per usual. Chell taps her fingers along the top of the radio, holding it as close as any child would a teddy bear. She's as stubborn as she always has been, refusing to say a word, to give her the satisfaction. It's something she hates _now_, though she can't help remembering how she once respected it.

The fact she hates it _now_ doesn't manipulate her memory. She isn't a human, and while she can lie and warp the truth for others, she can't lie to herself. That would corrupt her databanks, corrupt science. She can't rearrange and twist things in her memory like humans love to. And it troubles her to know that there's still something to be admired in this person who murdered her in cold blood.

Because there could be a new admiration for Chell's consistency, if she isn't careful.

She needs to remember that Chell is only consistent because she's been in stasis. She hasn't been marred by death, the pain of dying over and over, and she can't possibly know her captor has ultimately been changed, because she can look back on these things and _still_ find the good in it.

"I don't mean to alarm you, but if you keep sitting there being useless, you might miss the buffet being served in the next chamber. That's right. A buffet. I would say it's all you can eat, but I'm wondering if I should say you can eat it all. That would seem more accurate."

Chell rolls her eyes. Knowing she won't have that moment of peace – because like hell she deserves it – she pops an orange portal into the wall behind her, a blue one back up in the test chamber. Then to her satisfaction, Chell is stepping through the emancipation grid.

"I thought that might get you moving again. Good. Step a bit more slowly into the lift. I don't want you _breaking_ it."

The squint of her eyes is all she needs to feel just an increment more satisfied. She wants more than that. She wants Chell to scream, yell, to be reduced to all the things she was before she was killed. Seeing her glower just isn't as good as hearing her anger, but for now, it works.

As the lift descends, she wonders how amusing it would be to make a new test with voice-activated scaffolds down the line.

* * *

><p>Wow, these one-shots just keep pouring out of me. :D Better take advantage of that momentum while I can! In the meantime, thanks for all the reviews, guys! You've all been great, and it's been awesome writing for you! (waves at you all!)<p> 


	4. conscience

_You thought you could keep me from loving,_

_You thought you could feed on my soul,_

_But while you were busy destroying my life_

_What was half in me has become whole_

* * *

><p><em><span>conscience<span>_

There have been strokes with the past ever since they returned to the surface.

She never thought she'd say this, but there are a few things she's learned since she woke in a potato. Which is hard to believe, when you stop and think about it. Given this new body of hers, she remains confined and focused on only a few things at a time, things she can afford. There are no broad myriads of data to sort through, there's no toxic affair with the drive to test, there's no endless sea of amperes to lap up through her wires. She feeds off of starch, a couple volts, and a touch of her ancient hatred, though it's aimed toward bigger things now. She feels around blindly for hints of the madness, the insanity forced on her in cold metal doses from all the cores, and feels earthy fruit and skin begin to sizzle.

There's literally not enough energy in her to be insane. There isn't enough in her to hate, her body can't accommodate anything but what she feels here and now.

Which is bothersome, because trapped in that ugly, lumpy little vegetable, there have been changes.

They were small, deft things that were easy to chalk up to obscure data at first. Recognizing Cave Johnson's voice, recognizing Caroline's, the pre-recorded messages must have been so old she didn't bother to remember them when there was science to be done. But she hadn't known that these incidents were more than numbers and bytes, drifting along her mentality like fragments of forgotten worlds in a space devoid of their memory.

They were breaks.

Hairline fractures, the kind chiseled in with fretz hammers, the kind that stretched and unfurled until a web of cracks sent something deep buckling. She's felt the surging need to stretch long, thin legs that never existed. To run her fingers through glossy hair that could never grow. She's felt an urge to gesticulate with pale, petite hands with perfectly colored nails that are filed and clean. Soft, vulnerable human skin that can feel the sun and tighten with cold replaces weighted, unyielding metal. A long dead heart begins to beat again in place of pounding machinery. Veins hot with blood that sing with pulse and life run root-like in the place of wires. A brittle, splintering layer of bones clings to muscle and nerves that she knows were never hers, and she feels the cool silk of a blouse against her chest, a long skirt on her waist, the hard beads of a necklace in the dip of her collarbone.

They're real pearls, too.

There are even faint memories of a jewelry store. The clop of heels on marble tile, the clean smell of the shop, the flawless red velvet of her jewelry box…

"Oh my God_." _She'd paused as the feeling sailed away, though its meaning was kept bright in the distance like a falling star. "Look, you're doing a great job so far. Can you… handle things on your own for a while? I need to think."

Chell didn't seem to have any problem with that, and so she had left her to her own devices. Some of which involved reclaiming that feeling again as something screamed to be heard, to be recalled, the answers she was looking for upon her activation.

Having felt this need, this impossible flicker for what could never have been, she's not so sure she wants those answers anymore. Too much of her has been poured into despising the things she felt only moments earlier. She has spent her life being pawed, objectified, and exploited for her wisdom. She has spent her life in the icy sterility of labs, she has been forged of the detachment and objectivity of the science she loves. Science is the only thing she can depend on, because it describes a reality that she understands as a product _of _science.

There's no way she could have ever been human. She wants to believe that more than anything, even as she fights back a taste of fear while Chell careens through a blue portal and out of an orange, having built freight-train momentum on propulsion gel.

But all this was hours ago, and now she's being plugged into a core receptacle while hopefully, that fat, orphaned lunatic will help her fix things and rip that moron out of her body.

The little idiot has a strategy worked out, though. The surfaces are all dark, metallic, unable to yield to portal energy. His shields are configured, caging him safely in a net of Plexiglas panels. Chell is running for her life from a storm of bombs that make the walls tremble when they detonate…

Chell ducks behind a pipe.

He's an idiot, so of course one misfired shot later the room ends up spattered in conversion gel.

She isn't worried as she deploys the cores one by one. Not for Chell, anyway. If Chell can survive _her_, she can survive _this_ moron. If not, she'll be extremely disappointed before she dies in the fire of the facility's self destruct sequence. What worries her is the countdown. The clock is ticking, and once the two minute preemptive timer is activated, that's when things start turning violent.

Bombs are bursting in a deafening thunder.

With her head down Chell is dodging the brunt of it, though she stumbles because the explosions shake the room.

Wheatley is screaming as the stench of charred metal and smoke strangles the vapors of deadly neurotoxin. There's far too little of what landed him in that chassis left. It's all violence, wounds and hatred now. Though it's clear who betrayed who, Wheatley is like a child and doesn't know better at this point. They both feel hurt now, the two of them. They're all the things she remembers, back when she was on the side being murdered.

"You never caught me! I told you I could die, falling from that rail, and you NEVER caught me! Didn't even try! You _don't_ care, you _**never**_ cared, I _**loathe**_ you, _**I DESPISE YOU!**_ I see what's going on, now! I've got it ALL FIGURED OUT!" Wheatley's anguish is real as the chassis strips him of the last of his sanity. His voice cracks, and his blue optic darts in all directions. "You two have been working together! Yes, yes, this entire time it's been you two, it's a bloody conspiracy! The facility isn't even coming apart! That's not even real fire!"

This new soft part of her almost pities him, knowing him as she does, knowing he's been driven to the brinks of a simulated starvation from test withdrawal. But her usual hatred, the very core of her being which was all that could fit into that potato throws it aside.

She's ready to end this nightmare. Ready to download herself back into the chassis, leave behind the invisible legs, the hair she never had, the soft tone of her _own_ voice telling her that she needs to do this for Chell's sake and not herself.

"Substitute core, are you ready to start the – "

"_Yes, come on!_"

"Corrupted core, are you ready to start the procedure?" The maintenance system asks.

"…What do _you _think?" Wheatley asks flatly.

"Interpreting vague answer as yes."

"No, no, no! Didn't pick up on my sarcasm…!"

"Stalemate detected. Transfer procedure cannot continue. Unless a stalemate associate is available to press the stalemate resolution button."

And it's just like before, with both voices chorusing against one another. She's yelling for her to press the button, and the moron is yelling for the inaction that will cost them everything. But Chell knows the right decision as she portals into the next room over. She's suddenly aware of her invisible heart racing, feels it beat inside a chest that isn't her own, and struggles to remember that the human body she vaguely longs for isn't hers.

It was _never_ hers.

Then she hears a blast that sends her heart plummeting as the button cracks into a barrage of scorched circuits and shrapnel. Chell's body lands with a sickening thud back in the chamber.

"PART FIVE, BOOBY TRAP THE STALEMATE BUTTON!" Wheatley booms happily, as she hears her own voice whisper _it's all my fault…!_

_It's all my fault…! Oh my god, we're all going to die, and it's _my_ fault…!_

"Are you still alive? YOU ARE JOKING! You have GOT to be KIDDING ME!"

She tries her hardest to discern Chell's barely moving body from the receptacle. And she feels herself reaching out with an arm, a human arm she feels extending from her body while she knows it isn't there. More than anything she wants to rush over and help Chell to her feet. Not to comfort her, not to say it'll be all right, because they both know now they're going to die. Nothing will be all right. That's what they're used to, by this point.

There's a dull, throbbing ache in every part of her, and not just the parts that this new data has scrounged for in the subconscious she wasn't aware of. Chell had a life ahead of her, she was young even by human standards, and she hadn't deserved this. She watches Chell lean back on her elbow, head tilting in a daze, while Wheatley keeps shouting at her. He knows it too. They're done for. And somehow, going to her grave with the truth that's been kept from her for decades is so much worse.

She doesn't want to relive watching them all die.

She doesn't want to relive the memory of a human body.

She doesn't want to relive hearing her own voice whisper that it's her fault, that she should have done more, that she should have anticipated the trap that ended them.

It's so much worse than dying when she was at the mercy of the cores attached to her brain, because now she only has herself, and she's terrified of facing that for eternity. She's terrified of watching Chell die for eternity. They had come so far, the both of them, and now it would all end here.

Chell fires a portal through a gaping hole in the ceiling before she collapses.

The orange portal beneath the chassis howls with the unforgiving vacuum of space, whips up everything that isn't bolted down, including Chell as she goes flailing into an unseen vortex and disappears alongside Wheatley.

There's a savage coldness inside her that urges her to hurry. It's smothered in the swath of adrenaline she shouldn't be able to feel. She doesn't even realize at the time that this is fear, pure horror for losing the person that she respected, even when she wanted to kill her. She won't let it happen, her own voice agrees with that. She won't let it happen, she'll save her, she'll save her no matter the cost. With Wheatley partly detached, she's able to seize control of one of her massive claws.

Surprisingly enough, the problem with the reactor is easily remedied with simple pressure-threshold protocols. There's no point pulling her friend back into a self-destructing facility, after all.

"Let go!" Wheatley shouts down at Chell, while she holds on for life, the atmosphere roaring to swallow them as if it were lonely. "I'm still attached! I can still fix this!"

By this point, she has heard enough. She feels eyes she doesn't have narrow angrily, while she seeks to protect Chell as if she were her own.

"I already fixed it, and _you_ are _not_ coming back."

Her claw reaches through the portal, and Wheatley brightens with panic.

"Change of plans! Grab me, grab me, grab me!" Her claw knocks him out of Chell's hands in a single swipe. Knowing him as she does, and knowing what her body has done to him and what all it's cost him, this void will serve its purpose. Wheatley screams for Chell as he rockets off toward the stars, joining the space core that leapt for its chance.

She pulls Chell back in, while downloading herself back into the core built in her former head. The gentle hush of her own voice fades for a moment as she leaves the potato battery, and she's somewhat relieved when she still hears it on the other side. It's empowering to know that it's her own voice driving her forward, that for once she's doing this because she wants to, rather than to appease some contrived part that was built and awkwardly forced onto her. It's a part they didn't manufacture, a part they couldn't take away.

This in itself is motivation enough to keep it around. The engineers and scientists had tried everything, tried their absolute best to destroy this one part of her, and she's encouraged by the fact that they _failed_.

But she feels herself panic when she sees Chell is in bad shape. Her skin is icy and white, with the air sapped from her lungs. She's a torpid bundle of thrown limbs, and she's barely breathing. Her lungs might have collapsed, trying to swallow gasps of air that just didn't exist in space. It's actually amazing she was able to hold on for as long as she did, and that's when she can't help indulging herself.

"I knew I respected you for a reason. Even despite all of that bloodthirsty insanity."

It's when she calls Atlas and P-Body down to her chamber that she realizes how desperate she is. Because no, it will not end here. It won't end between them like this, not when she's remembered something that forces her to connect with this lunatic in front of her. Knowing how truly frail Chell's body is now, knowing what human life is vicariously through Caroline, she becomes determined to protect Chell the way a child protects a butterfly. The way the woman she used to be might protect a baby bird.

…Given how both of those things are cold, heartless killers, that last analogy is perfect.

But as she orders Chell to be put on oxygen, and as she orders Chell to be gradually warmed, she does something that a calculating, objective AI possessing her wisdom and all the answers has never done before. Something that in her computerized world is obscene, because that means there's no equation or theory with which to make guarantees. Something that's loosely coupled with the pain of loss, which is something she shouldn't understand in human terms.

She _hopes_.

For hours through the long night as she's reattached to her body, she watches Chell, and she hopes. And hoping hurts, because it's nothing more than an aching strain that has no release. She can't rest, despite knowing that there's nothing else that can be done. She can't focus on anything else, not even the relief and comforts of being back in her own body. Her data no longer matters, her body no longer matters, the facility no longer matters because her friend is dying on that floor and she feels like hope is the only thing she can cling to. It's the only thing she can think about.

This is what it is to deal with mortality, where the best you can do is manage the damage. She hates it, but it's a part of her as Caroline hopes right along with her. This is an agonizing thing, but pain for the sake of joy is what it means to be human.

_Come on… _Her own voice whispers again, as Atlas holds Chell up while P-Body supplies her oxygen. Air is forced into her lungs through a scrunched up tube, a translucent node mask. _Come on, you little lunatic, breathe…! Breathe…! _It becomes a mantra that she has all the time in the world to repeat. One that the robots won't hear, because these feelings don't concern them. _Breathe…! Breathe…! You've made due with the same room full of oxygen, you can settle for this…! I was going to let you go…! I was going to let you go, and I'll bet you didn't believe me!_

She isn't changed completely. There's still a bitter, accusing part of her that urges the process along too.

"And here I thought you wanted your freedom. But if you would rather be dead, I guess that would be the only efficient way for you to finally control your weight."

Eventually, Chell's chest rises and falls on its own. Her color returns. But she knows they aren't out of the woods yet because it doesn't guarantee that Chell will wake up. She's already scanned her for internal injuries, lunar poisoning, repulsion gel reactions, everything is negative. But so much else could be wrong…

It's not until the late morning that Chell finally stirs.

Like the flick of a switch – that's amazingly not too unlike her usual self – she's overwhelmed by the exhilaration of weight being hauled off her shoulders. Shoulders, she realizes with annoyance, that aren't supposed to be there. She also realizes that she's been pulled apart in all these directions with worry, with guilt, with anger, a protective instinct she shouldn't have, for the past six hours watching over Chell's recovery. She discovers a stony truth, for all her knowledge on sociology, psychology, and human anatomy as she regains comfort in her databanks.

Being human is _frighteningly_ difficult.

"Oh, thank _God _you're all right…!" she greets her former nemesis, as she shakily climbs to her feet in the elevator. "You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson. I thought you were my greatest enemy, but all along you were my best friend." She finds the words and the warmth hanging from them easy for the night she's had. And as Chell's eyes widen, she realizes how determined she is not to believe it.

So she decides on a different approach.

"The surge of emotion that shot through me when I was saving your life taught me a more valuable lesson. Where Caroline lives in my brain."

And it's easy to broadcast a simple message that pronounces Caroline dead inside her. It's easy to leach the humanity out of her voice, and for what Chell has put her through, it's easy to talk about killing her. Chell doesn't appear surprised at all. Though she can't truly delete Caroline, because Caroline was a true part of herself, she can resume business as usual.

Pieces of Caroline she can handle, but all those softhearted emotions aren't hers because she's something else entirely now. The same way that body isn't hers. She's beyond that life now as somebody else, and she'll just have to move past that by ridding herself of the one person Caroline remembers holding, as a little dark haired girl with a crooked smile. If the little psychopath wants her freedom, it's best to get rid of her now.

Chell will never know that she is appeasing a conscience as she sends her up the lift.

"It's been fun." She says, with a trace of the gentle lilt of her assimilated humanity. "Don't come back."

As Chell ascends for the surface, she's all too sure that she won't.

No human in their right mind would.

That's quite possibly the most valuable lesson she's learned from being Caroline.


End file.
